Past Projects

AutoTutor
is an intelligent tutoring system that helps students learn about
computer literacy, physics, and other subject matters by holding a conversation in natural
language. AutoTutor appears as an animated agent that acts as a dialog
partner with the learners. The animated agent delivers AutoTutor's
dialog moves with synthesized speech, intonation, facial expressions,
and gestures.

AutoCommunicator[PI: Art Graesser and Xiangen Hu]

This
project developed a question answering system that allows faculty,
students, and the public to learn about technology transfer and the
relevant research projects at the University of Memphis. The system was designed to be one of the Web faculties for the FedEx Institute of Technology
site. The user accesses relevant information to their queries by asking
a question in natural language and engaging in a brief dialogue with
AutoCommunicator until an answer is found. An animated conversational
agent is available to guide the dialog.

Coh-Metrix
is a system on the web for computing cohesion and coherence metrics
for written and spoken texts, using advanced methods in computational linguistics. Coh-Metrix allows readers, writers,
educators, and researchers to instantly gauge the difficulty of written
text. In addition to cohesion, the system has over 100 measures of words, syntax, and other characteristics of language and discourse.

The researchers developed an innovative intelligent tutoring system that helps students learn Newtonian physics. DeepTutor’s hallmark features are deep natural language and discourse processing, advanced tutoring strategies targeting frequent illusions in tutoring, and advanced instructional strategies in the form of learning progressions.

Guru models the strategies and dialogue of expert human tutors and is a logical progression from AutoTutor, which models novice human tutors. The Guru expert tutor, by using expert human tutor strategies, actions, and dialogue, should promote larger learning gains than previous novice computer tutors. Guru produced learning gains in biology that are comparable to trained human tutors.

iSTART
(Interactive Strategy Trainer for Active Reading and Thinking) is an
automated strategy trainer designed to help students become better
readers via multi-media technologies. Pedagogical agents provide
students with interactive and adaptive training to use active reading
strategies.

Languages Across Cultures [PI: Art Graesser]

This project investigated the language and discourse patterns of English and Arabic texts using computerized text analysis tools. Specifically, the researchers analyzed discourse patterns in various corpora such as newspapers, speeches, and conversations to elucidate the leadership style, personality, and social status of leaders. In addition to English and Arabic, analyses were performed on Korean, Chinese, and other languages. We will use computational tools that automatically analyze texts on hundreds of measures of language and text cohesion (using Coh-Metrix), including word characteristics, syntax complexity, lexical diversity, readability, connectives, latent semantic analysis, co-referential cohesion, mental model dimensions, and genre.

MetaTutor [PI: Roger Azevedo]

MetaTutor
is a multi-agent, hypermedia-based intelligent tutoring system that
is designed to improve the effectiveness of animated pedagogical agents
(APAs) as external regulatory agents in the learning of the circulatory
system. A mixed-initiative intelligent tutoring system similar to
AutoTutor simulates the discourse patterns and pedagogical strategies
of human tutors. The underlying assumption of MetaTutor is that
students should regulate key cognitive, metacognitive, motivational,
social, and affective processes to learn complex science topics. The
design of MetaTutor is based on extensive research by Azevedo and
colleagues showing that adaptive human scaffolding that addresses both
the content of the domain and the processes of self-regulated learning
enhances students' learning of challenging science topics with
hypermedia.

SEEK Web Tutor on Plate Tectonics [PI: Art Graesser]

This
project investigated the impact of a Web tutor on helping college
students' identify true versus false bodies of knowledge while
exploring Web pages to research the causes of the eruption of Mt. St.
Helens. The Web tutor (called SEEK, an acronym for Source, Evidence,
Explanation, and Knowledge) was designed to improve a critical stance
through several facilities in a computer environment: spoken hints on a
mock Google search page, on-line ratings on the reliability of
particular Web sites, and a structured note-taking facility that
prompted them to reflect on the quality of particular Web sites.

A
computer model of human question understanding (called QUEST) helps
survey designers identify problems with questions on a Web-based tool
called QUAID (Question Understanding Aid). QUAID is a software tool
that assists survey methodologists, social scientists, and designers of
questionnaires in improving the wording, syntax, and semantics of
questions. QUAID is being used by six government agencies.

Working in collaboration with researchers at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Notre Dame, UM researchers identified skills that may differentially affect performance of individual humans in cognitive tasks relevant to flying airplanes and communicating with team members. The project identified or developed measures to quantify individual ability with respect to each identified skill. A battery of tests were administered to experimental test participants to assess their relative abilities to predict task performance.

Writing Pal [PI: Danielle McNamara]

This project developed a new automated intelligent tutoring system that provides interactive and adaptive strategy training that encourages students to use independent writing techniques. The W-Pal was evaluated with high school students and English teachers from urban and suburban schools in Memphis and Tempe Arizona.

ALEKS [PI: Xiangen Hu]

This study examined the efficacy of using the ALEKS (Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces) system as a method of strategic intervention in after-school settings to improve the mathematical skills of struggling 6th grade students in the Jackson-Madison County School System in Jackson, TN. ALEKS is a web-based, artificial intelligent assessment and learning system that uses adaptive questioning to quickly and accurately determine exactly what a student knows and does not know in a course. This study focused on sixth grade students who are in the bottom 40th percentile in math achievement.

Operation ARIES [PI: Art Graesser]

Operation ARIES (Acquiring Research Investigative and Evaluative Skills) is a learning environment with conversational agents that hold trialogs with the human learner who is acquiring critical reasoning skills on science. The learner holds conversations with two animated pedagogical agents while solving a number of engaging problems in the social and physical sciences. ARIES is embedded in a game environment with an electronic textbook, multiple choice questions, and the trialogs. Science teachers in both high school and higher institutions can assign ARIES as homework if they decide not to devote class time to it.

GIFT [PI: Xiangen Hu]

The ultimate goal of this multiyear collaborative effort between the ARL Team and the Memphis team is to build a science-based suite of documents, guidelines, prototypes, and architectures that exhibit advanced learning technologies embodying the features of the Generalized Intelligent Framework for Tutors (GIFT) and conversational agents. These deliverables are informed by a community of researchers who have relevant expertise to bring these advanced technologies to fruition. The hope of this project is that the next generation of personnel in the DoD will be fortified with the optimal learning environments for a broad landscape of subject matters, personnel, and practical challenges in the military.

AutoMentor [PI: David Shaffer]

This project developed a system for producing automated professional mentoring (called AutoMentor) as critical piece of technological infrastructure for a new, more motivating, and more inclusive approach to STEM education. This project was a collaboration between University of Wisconsin, University of Memphis, University of Maryland, and Massachusetts Audubon Society.

AutoTutor Emotions [PI: Art Graesser]

AutoTutor simulates human tutorial dialog with an animated conversational agent that helps students learn qualitative physics or computer literary by holding conversations in natural language. This project tracked the emotions and knowledge of the learner by dialogue patterns, speech intonation, facial expressions, and body movements. It integrated advances in discourse processes, education, multimedia, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, and artificial intelligence. The project investigates strategies, processes, practices, and environments that are likely to assist the learners in interactive knowledge construction, particularly at deeper levels of comprehension and problem solving.

Researchers from the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis (UM) plan to develop Shareable Knowledge Object (SKO) Modules Using a Portable Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) to teach mathematics to high school students. The proposed project targets intelligent tutoring systems that use animated conversational agents to hold conversations with learners in natural language. The proposed development focus on high school Algebra addresses a gap in agent-based learning systems in mathematics with applicability to addition STEM content and Navy training topics that require deep conceptual learning and/or precise analytical reasoning. It also addresses a key area of achievement deficiency among the nation’s high school student that negatively impacts pipeline development for future STEM fields important to the Navy.